Kazakh alphabets
The Kazakh language is written in three scripts – Old Turkic, Cyrillic, Latin, and Arabic – each having a distinct alphabet.
In October 2017, a presidential decree in Kazakhstan ordered a transition from the Cyrillic to Latin script to be phased in from 2023 to 2031.
[3] The Kazakh Cyrillic alphabet is used in Kazakhstan, the Altai Republic in Russia, and the Bayan-Ölgiy Province in Mongolia.
The letter ⟨щ⟩ represents a long ⟨ш⟩ in three native words: ащы [ɑʃːə́] 'bitter', тұщы [tʰʊ̆ʃːʊ́] 'saltless', and кеще [cʰĕɕːé] 'stupid'), as well as in Russian loanwords.
A variant based on the Turkish alphabet is unofficially used by the Kazakh diaspora in Turkey and in Western countries, as well as in Kazakhstan.
As with other Central Asian Turkic languages, a Latin alphabet, the Yañalif, was introduced by the Soviets and used from 1929 to 1940 when it was replaced with Cyrillic.
[13] In 2015, the Minister of Culture and Sports Arystanbek Muhamediuly announced that a transition plan was underway, with specialists working on the orthography to accommodate the phonological aspects of the language.
[14] On 12 April 2017, Nazarbayev published an article in state newspaper Egemen Qazaqstan announcing a switchover to the Latin alphabet by 2025,[9][14] a decision implemented by decree.
[11] Nazarbayev later lamented that the "Kazakh language and culture have been devastated" during the period of Soviet rule, and that ending the use of Cyrillic is useful in re-asserting national identity.
[19] In 2020, the President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for another revision of the Latin alphabet with a focus on preserving the original sounds and pronunciation of the Kazakh language.
[22][23] This revision, presented to the public in November 2019 by academics from the Baitursynov Institute of Linguistics, and specialists belonging to the official working group on script transition, uses umlauts, breves and cedillas instead of digraphs and acute accents, and introduces spelling changes in order to reflect more accurately the phonology of Kazakh.
As this version was awaiting approval, linguists had been in discussion as to which Latin letters were to be used in place of their corresponding Cyrillic letters ⟨ə, ғ, и, й, ң, ɵ, у, ұ, ү, ы, ч, ш, i⟩; a suggested alternative to the introduction of accented characters was to make greater use of digraphs, with ⟨ч⟩ being written as ⟨tş⟩, for example.
[25][better source needed] In January 2021, a new revision of the Kazakh Latin alphabet was presented, introducing the letters ⟨ä, ö, ü, ğ, ū, ŋ, ş⟩[20] bringing it closer to the CTA.
It was first introduced to the territory of Kazakhstan in the eleventh century and was traditionally used to write Kazakh until the introduction of a Latin alphabet in 1929.
Kazakhs living in China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and other countries of the Middle East mainly use the Arabic script.
[29] Another exception is when words that contain the uvular consonants /q/ (ق) and /ʁ/ (ع), the vowels are pronounced as back and are thus not written with the hamza.
